Category: News

"Kids had never been attacked in this kind of way"

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Yesterday marked the tenth anniversary of Columbine, the familiar title given the killings at the Columbine high school in Littleton, Colorado. CNN yesterday ran a piece about the release of a new book — Columbine, by Dave Cullen — which I’ve been meaning to pick up. The big draw of the book for me is that is tells the real story of what happened and debunks many of the myths which sprung up in the immediate aftermath. Among them:

  • There was a group of kids at Columbine called the Trench Coat Mafia, but Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold weren’t part of it.
  • The killers did not target jocks (those wearing baseball hats, as it’s sometimes reported) or black kids. There was no discernible pattern to their killing.
  • Harris and Klebold, though clearly unstable and dangerous, were not outcasts or loners, nor was their rampage apparently caused by bullying.
  • Cassie Bernall, reported to have been killed when she replied to the killers that she believed in god and subsequently made a martyr by evangelical christians, in fact said no such thing. Another student was asked whether she believed in god; she answered yes, was shot and lived.

The first three myths are explained by psychologists in the CNN article as being persistent because they were (irresponsibly) reported immediately after the killing, and are convenient for people to believe because they point to Harris and Klebold being misanthropes, different from everyone else, conveniently monstrous. People don’t like to think that normal people can do terrible things, so they cast them as evil. While not logical, this is understandable as a coping mechanism.

The last myth, though…that’s the one that gets me. By the fall of 1999 it was well established that the rumour about Bernall was false, but her parents still earned royalties from a book about her death called She Said Yes released in Aug 1999 (and reprinted several times) and earned $3,500 per speaking appearance in the years since. Misinformation is one thing; exploitation another.

How does a homeless junkie get a broadcast license anyway?

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By now you’ve likely heard about the episode of the Fox News show Red Eye (if you haven’t seen it already, download the WMV) wherein late night panel show host Greg Gutfeld mocked the Canadian military. Predictably, this got the Canadian public, pundits and politicians all in a palaver. Today Gutfeld apologized…kind of. It was one of those “I’m sorry you got so offended by what I said” apologies. So Canadians are a little less pissed, but pissed still.

I’m not. Make no mistake, I would take great umbrage with anyone who questioned the dedication or sacrifice of our military, if I were inclined to respect their opinion in the first place. But this was five minutes on a 3AM panel show. On Fox News, which is a laughable network to begin with. Featuring four people no one’s ever heard of and a host who used to run Maxim magazine. Oh…my wounded pride.

Look, when the crazy guy on the sidewalk starts yelling at you as you pass him, do you get offended? No. He’s shown no signs of ever having been insightful, so you chalk it up to the fact that he’s batshit insane and you ignore him. Giving him attention will just make him act crazier.

So now a lot of people who were entirely unaware of either Greg Gutfeld or Red Eye before the weekend have heard of them, and know the time and channel they’re on TV. How sorry do you think Gutfeld and Fox News really are?

Loosest slots in…well, anywhere.

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If you live in Ontario you might have heard about the guy who hit the jackpot on a slot machine for $42,900,000. Trouble is, the machine was supposed to max out around $9,000. Via the Toronto Star:

Paul Kusznirewicz, perhaps the world’s most unlucky lottery “winner,” thought he had struck it big at the Georgian Downs casino in Innisfil this past December, when the 2-cent slot machine he had been playing for 20 minutes exploded in lights and music. A message: “Call attendant. You have won a jackpot of $42.9 million” popped up on the screen, the 55-year-old says.

But when casino personnel arrived to investigate, they told the Wasaga Beach resident that the slot machine had messed up and he wasn’t entitled to any winnings. All Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. machines display a notice that malfunctions void all pays and plays. “This machine clearly malfunctioned. The most it can possibly pay out is $9,025,” said OLG spokesperson Allison Sparkes.

While the OLG is technically right, they’ve also technically been pretty douchebaggy about this. They didn’t give the guy the $9,000 he should have gotten — presumably the amount calculation malfunctioned, not the fact that he won — but rather offered to comp him dinner for four. How magnanimous. The man, quite understandably, is suing the bejeezus out of OLG; it almost certainly would have been less costly for them to simply do the right thing in this case.

But when reading this my cynical side kicked in. Maybe this was a ploy by the casino, a devious(er?) form of marketing. For the cost of some legal fees and the $9,000 they’ll surely end up paying this guy to go away, they’ve guaranteed themselves a ton of press. Now, you might say that this is bad press. I would counter that, aside from there being no such thing, those with a tenuous understanding of math and odds — in other words, a casino’s primary audience — might actually see this as a chance to visit a casino whose slots are screwy and prone to giving out exorbitant sums. I know, it seems a stretch, but I suspect that even now some poor rube  is planning a trip to Georgian Downs with their fingers crossed that they too will trick the computerized moneymaking system.

Let's get ready to rumble!

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Welcome to this bout for the superheavyweight ridiculousness championship of the world.

In this corner we have the Canadian minister of state for science & technology, Gary Goodyear (who obviously missed his true calling: cartoon race car driver), who refuses to say whether he believes in evolution:

Jim Turk, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, said he was flabbergasted that the minister would invoke his religion when asked about evolution.

“The traditions of science and the reliance on testable and provable knowledge has served us well for several hundred years and have been the basis for most of our advancement. It is inconceivable that a government would have a minister of science that rejects the basis of scientific discovery and traditions,” he said.

Mr. Goodyear’s evasive answers on evolution are unlikely to reassure the scientists who are skeptical about him, and they bolster the notion that there is a divide between the minister and the research community.

And in this corner, with a reach much greater than Mr. Goodyear’s, is Pope Benedict, who yesterday said that condoms won’t stop the spread of AIDS in Africa.

“You can’t resolve it with the distribution of condoms,” the Pope told reporters aboard his plane to Yaounde, Cameroon. “On the contrary, it increases the problem.”

While health workers — including some priests and nuns working with people with AIDS — advocate the use of condoms to curb the spread of disease during sex, the Catholic church promotes fidelity within marriage, chastity and abstinence.

More than 22 million people in sub-Saharan Africa have HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, according to estimates from the United Nations. Since the 1980s, roughly 25 million people have died from AIDS.

Come out, touch gloves. Let’s have a clean fight. Against reality.

"Is he giving squinting lessons?"

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Activists in Calgary plan to protest the arrival in their city of George Bush. Oh, kids. Bad move. Don’t give him attention in any form. The opposite of love isn’t hate, you ninnies, it’s indifference.

George W. Bush can expect a cordial welcome tomorrow inside a Calgary convention hall as the wildly unpopular former U.S. president gives his first public address since leaving office, but outside, a gauntlet of protesters don’t plan to be the least bit polite.

Local activists have been ramping up their anti-Bush efforts in advance of the $4,000 per table invite-only event titled a “Conservation [sic] with George W. Bush.” The media is banned from hearing Mr. Bush talk about “eight momentous years in the Oval Office” and “the challenges facing the world in the 21st century.”

Politics aside, this strikes me as odd. A former president he may be, and an interesting public figure to be sure, but how can anyone possibly consider it a worthwhile use of $4,000 to listen to George Bush talk? You’re better off paying for Lindsay Lohan to speak: she’s about as insightful, her entourage takes up a few less hotel rooms and she brings her own DJ.

"[A] false choice between sound science and moral values."

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Reading these words from a sitting American president is almost enough to restore my faith in…well, in American presidents.

“Promoting science isn’t just about providing resources, it is also about protecting free and open inquiry,” Mr. Obama said. “It is about letting scientists like those here today do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it’s inconvenient especially when it’s inconvenient. It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology.”

Contrast that with George W. Bush’s words in 2001:

In recent weeks, we learned that scientists have created human embryos in test tubes solely to experiment on them. This is deeply troubling and a warning sign that should prompt all of us to think through these issues very carefully.

Embryonic stem cell research is at the leading edge of a series of moral hazards. The initial stem cell researcher was at first reluctant to begin his research, fearing it might be used for human cloning. Scientists have already cloned a sheep. Researchers are telling us the next step could be to clone human beings to create individual designer stem cells, essentially to grow another you, to be available in case you need another heart or lung or liver.

I strongly oppose human cloning, as do most Americans. We recoil at the idea of growing human beings for spare body parts or creating life for our convenience.

I’m not sure I could find a better example of progressive vs. conservative.

I, for one, find the Harbor Hopper ads very offensive

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Just when I really start to like Halifax again, it goes and does something goofy like reject the Atheist Bus ads. (Full disclosure: I donated to the Atheist Bus campaign in Canada.)

A ‘Without God’ ad has proven too controversial for Halifax transit.

Humanist Canada wanted to place ads on Metro Transit buses with the slogan, “You can be good without God.”

But officials with the transit authority deemed that too controversial.

“We’re a public transit system first, and then we sell advertising,” Lori Patterson, spokewoman for Metro Transit, told CBC News on Monday.

“So, if anytime we feel there’s a message that could be controversial and upsetting to people, we don’t necessarily sell the ads.”

First of all, that reasoning is absurd. Virtually every ad could be offensive to someone. If one gives Ms. Patterson the benefit of the doubt and assumes she means “upsetting to the majority of people,” it becomes hard to reconcile the fact that they’ve granted ad space to the anti-abortion organization Birthright, as reported on the Atheist Bus website.

Second, not only is the actual message less inflammatory than the “There’s probably no god…” ads to run in Toronto, it’s completely benign! How can you possibly argue with the statement “You can be good without God.”, let alone find it upsetting? Can, people, can. The ads don’t say you will be better without god, they just state the fact that people who don’t believe in gods are capable of being good.

I’m confident this response — which seems much more like a knee-jerk than a reasoned reaction — is so baseless and silly that, despite how conservative Nova Scotia can be sometimes, will ultimately be reversed. I’m also hopeful that Vancouver will avoid embarrassing themselves in this way.

So far the best response to the ads I’ve heard about is what the United Church of Canada is planning: ads that say “There probably is a God, so stop worrying and enjoy your life.” Hurrah! Instead of trying to silence a contrary argument, they made their own counter-ad, and with a sly wink as well. Well played, UCC. (More full disclosure: I was raised United, and while I’ve been an atheist for many years, my parents remain very active in their church.)

Eddy Grant, where are you?

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From today’s Globe and Mail:

Toronto Hydro’s problems with “stray voltage” mounted over the weekend with reports that another five individuals and three dogs had received shocks but had not been injured after stepping on the city’s aging metal handwells.

The utility received six calls on Saturday and one yesterday to a hot line it set up to report such incidents. Sean Borden reported that in the summer he and his dog, Mocha, both got a jolt after stepping over a handwell in the east end, just around the corner from where last week a pupil at Regent Park/Duke of York Junior Public School was zapped, but uninjured.

Gives a whole new meaning to “Electric Avenue,” don’t you think?

Risen, like a turkey from the ashes

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A final thought on yesterday’s topic, Bush’s legacy: as the clarity of distance seeps into the memory of the Bush43 years, it will be curious to observe the phases through which his reputation will pass. My prediction is as follows:

He’ll fade from the limelight by the spring, and generally avoid interviews from all but the most sympathetic questioners. After about a year information will begin appearing in books and magazine articles about how one or two high-ranking members of Bush’s administration — my money’s on Rumsfeld or Ashcroft, unless Cheney dies, making him the prime candidate — were pure evil, bent on starting wars, desecrating the constitution, etc. After these stories have had time to make the talk show and book trip rounds, opinions will begin to appear portraying Bush as a well-intentioned everyman fighting valiantly to keep the country intact in the face of these unreasonable forces, but powerless to stop them and, thus, to prevent the various disasters we today attribute to him and his administration…Iraq, the economy, the Katrina debacle, and so on.

The American public will be asked to forgive him, to label him some sort of put-upon Johnny Lunchpail hero who fought the good fight, a Willy Loman of the White House, truly a guy you’d want to have a beer with. The Republican party will need their everyman hero back in time to help campaign in 2012, so after a year of laying low while his reputation is healed through gentle reverse-swiftboating, he’ll make a triumphant appearance on the 2012 campaign trail and his resurrection will be complete.

That, or he’ll clear brush in Texas for the next twenty-five years like a good little cowpoke. Whichever.